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1、 Page iii The Limits of Language Stephen David Ross FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Page iv Copyright 1994 by Fordham University Press All rights reserved LC 9317970 ISBN 0823215180 (clothbound) Second printing 1996 Library of Congress CataloginginPublcation Data Ross, Stephen David The limits of
2、language / by Stephen David Ross p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0823215180 (cloth): $32.00 1. Language and languagesPhilosophy. I. Title. P106. R66 19949317970 401dc20CIP PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK WAS AIDED BY A GRANT FROM THE HENRY AND IDA WISSMANN FUND“ Printed in the Uni
3、ted States of America Page v Contents Acknowledgmentsvii Introductionix 1. Initial Considerations1 2. General Principles26 3. Grammar102 4. Knowledge144 5. Society176 6. Discourse207 7. Language and Limits247 Bibliography273 Index279 Page vii Acknowledgments Material from chapter 6 was previously pu
4、blished as “Foucaults Radical Politics,“ Praxis International, 5, No. 2 (July 1985), and “Belonging to a Philosophic Discourse,“ Philosophy and Rhetoric, 19, No. 3 (1986), 16677. Page ix Introduction This is a century of language. It has seen linguistics develop into a science 1 and philosophy take
5、a “linguistic turn.“ 2 It will have witnessed the disappearance of half the worlds languages, with no children today who speak them, and can expect most of the rest to disappear in another century. Language has been said to express the essence of humanity, or of reason, even to surpass both humanity
6、 and rationality. 3 That these functions, separately and together, threaten to overwhelm more proximate questions of language, especially what, under particular circumstances, would be best to say and why, is the least of the difficulties, engendered by such extravagant views. Yet this extravagance
7、is not without plausibility or significance, and language transcends whatever limits we set for it. This phenomenon is the burden of the ensuing discussion. Four general questions express the focus of our attention on language as a prevailing characteristic of human experience: 1. What is language?
8、Is it an identifiable subject matter (beyond the rudimentary sense that we are located within it)? 2. What is its relation to the world we speak of or write about, that is, to what we may address through language? 3. What is its role in human life and experience, especially in relation to the charac
9、teristic traits of human being? 4. Are there determining characteristic traits of language and of human being, or does language place every “we“ and “us,“ every “natural creature“ and “thing,“ in jeopardy? These questions shape the ensuing discussion, though we may find that the answers elude us. Bu
10、t whether or not we can answer such questions about language may be the issue that concerns us, and, more important, if we conclude we cannot do so, just why we cannot, whether this inability reflects an important truth about language, or even about humanity or nature. If there can be a science of l
11、anguage along with other human sciences, if human being is something that can be known as well as lived through, then each of these questions may be supposed to have a definite answer. 4 And there have always been philosophers who believed that we can provide a definitive if not exhaustive Page x ac
12、count of the nature of language and its role in human experience. An important question, raised by Saussure, is whether, if there is to be a science of language, language must be sharply, if not precisely, delimited, a unique object of thought, or whether language is to be understood instead as comp
13、lexly situated among an inexhaustible multiplicity of sciences and subject matters, situations and contexts. We will explore why language cannot be delimited as a proper object of thought, any more than can human being. In neither case should we conclude that no science of language or of human being
14、 is possible. That conclusion depends on a restricted view of science. Language is not an object, neither an artifact nor a tool, nor is it unique in its important characteristics within human experience and nature. We are surrounded by many other forms of representation and meaning we are surrounde
15、d by many forms of culture and humanity. Here Heideggers claim that language is the house of being, and Gadamers and Wittgensteins related claim that we always find ourselves within language, embody profound insights. 5 So does the related claim, in Levinas, Lyotard, and Irigaray, that language whis
16、pers of a Forgotten, an Unsaid, in whose silence ethical responsibility is born. As a consequence, as Irigaray also says, the deepest questions of humanity and the world fall where language meets sexual difference, questions of inexhaustibility and heterogeneity. 6 These claims reflect many of the issues to be discussed below, including that of the nature of language. We have characterized this issue as the question of whether language is a proper object of thought, an instr
